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None of this is to say that interleague should be removed. What it does say is don’t use those past numbers as propaganda to say how much more popular interleague is since it came into place in 1997. As the numbers now show, it’s pretty much a wash. Enjoy it for what it is, not some monumental popularity shift added to the regular season.

Agreed. Few may care about Twins vs. Reds, but few care about Twins vs. Mariners or Reds vs. Marlins, either.

The only change I would make is that beginning in 2016, after the current three-year interleague divisional scheduling cycle ends, I would make games played by the visiting league's rules. For 10 games a year, let fans at Rangers Ballpark see pitchers hit; let those at Nationals Park see the DH. That would add a new dimension to interleague play.

I care about Rangers vs. Reds about as much as I care about Cowboys vs. Bengals: that is to say, sure, I'll watch it, but it's not inherently as interesting as Rangers-A's or Cowboys-Giants.

I guess I did attend the "Rivalry Week" game that the Diamondbacks got in here in Texas (and tried to go to the one that was rained out), but that's just because I had some free time. I was barely aware it was a Rivalry.

This whole current mess of interleague games is caused solely by the existence of two 15-team leagues and the understandable desire not to have two teams just sitting around every day. With expansion to 32 teams there'd be infinitely more flexibility in the scheduling.

I don't think you can just normalize the Memorial game day, because it was still a rivalry game (for most teams) and thus would still have had more fans than an average game. And what about all the home opener games, with only a few interleague games among them? My guess is that the numbers are basically even, and that matchups (excluding big-name teams and rivals) don't matter at all. If you're in Philly, it doesn't matter if its the Brewers or the Royals in town.

current mess of interleague games is caused solely by the existence of two 15-team leagues

True, but it's pretty much a non-factor in following the boxscores, except for the annoying tendency of media outlets to group interleague scores separately from AL and NL scores. That distinction has become meaningless. Maybe the scores should be listed alphabetically by home team, or something.

The only change I would make is that beginning in 2016, after the current three-year interleague divisional scheduling cycle ends, I would make games played by the visiting league's rules. For 10 games a year, let fans at Rangers Ballpark see pitchers hit; let those at Nationals Park see the DH. That would add a new dimension to interleague play.

Jayson Stark has been pushing(and I fully support him on it) that the second game of interleague games should be by the visitor's rules. To me that is so obvious that it surprises me it hasn't happened, even though Bud Selig has said it seems like a good idea when he was approached about it.

I really hate these type of articles because they just don't do enough research on the issue. You would have to assign interleague games into tiers "games nobody cares about" "games people slightly care about" "games people really care about" and "rivalries"... and compare them to the same type of teams (or just use whatever number of categories you want...but at least three categories) You can't compare Cardinals vs Cubs to a Cardinals vs Mariners game. Heck you probably can't compare Cardinals vs Pirates to a Cardinals versus Mariners game. You would want to compare Cardinals vs Mariners to Cardinals versus Marlins to see if there is any added cache to the interleague games.

You would have to assign interleague games into tiers "games nobody cares about" "games people slightly care about" "games people really care about" and "rivalries"

Obviously what you want is to get more games into the 'rivalries' and 'games people really care about' categories. I would argue you are far less likely to do that when you have a schedule like we have now where you play every team outside your division like three times. You'll never build any really rivalries that way. The Braves used to have decent rivalries with teams like the Dodgers, Reds, and Giants but now they don't play those teams much and instead are in Kansas City and Minnesota so the rivalries just kind of fade away.

I hate that we're at this point, but given that we are at this point, we really might as well go ahead and do total regional realignment. Mets-Red Sox wouldn't be Mets-Yankees, but there'd still be a lot more interest than Mets-Royals.

I'm surprised that this apparently wasn't the point all along to everything Selig has been doing. Of course, he might assume he has 20 more years left so he still has time.

Baseball has been stacking the attendance deck in favor of interleague since it started, grouping the games after school has gotten out, with games always on Father's Day and before the real blistering heat of August, etc.

Obviously what you want is to get more games into the 'rivalries' and 'games people really care about' categories.

Agree. And one of the oversells on interleague has been that it automatically moves teams that nobody cares about into higher categories, but clearly that isn't the case. The only real advantage of interleague(in regards to attendance) is the rivalry games, and games that have a natural selling point....example would be if the Cardinals hosted the Angels this year, I guarantee you those games would have sold out(or close to it---I'm glad it didn't happen that way, as I want a little more time away from Albert for healing, so hopefully the fans behave) and of course when you are able to remove games that nobody cares about(say Cardinals vs Braves) and replace it with one that they care about slightly(Say Cardinals vs White Sox) at least you might get a little bump in attendance.

Personally I'm a huge fan of interleague and don't care about what the attendance argument is or not, just glad to be able to see more players/teams live than I have in the past.

I hate that we're at this point, but given that we are at this point, we really might as well go ahead and do total regional realignment. Mets-Red Sox wouldn't be Mets-Yankees, but there'd still be a lot more interest than Mets-Royals.

I'm surprised that this apparently wasn't the point all along to everything Selig has been doing. Of course, he might assume he has 20 more years left so he still has time.

Awesome! This gives me another chance to present my master plan for 2050:

18 Intra-League games vs each team and 3 Inter-League games vs 12 other MLB teams chosen however you want.

College World Series style playoffs hosted by League Champs but also including 2nd place teams from another league, winners of NPB Central and Pacific Leagues, and 1 MLB Wild Card from a Round Robin of 3rd Place Teams, and 1 Wild Card from Round Robin of teams from Taiwan, China, Korea, Netherlands, Italy and whoever else. 7 Game Series for World Series Finals.

Also I do think Selig has been working to diminish league distinctions and move toward his original "radical realignment" plan step by step.

I would love to see four eight-team leagues, with the top two finishers in each making it into a three-round postseason.

I reckon it won't happen because the trend across all sports is to have smaller divisions, on the theory that you can't sell a 16th- or 12th- or 8th-place team. I don't know how stupid they think fans are, that they can't figure out that the Astros and Marlins are 15th-place teams, but that seems to be the current wisdom.

I wouldn't mind eight four-team divisions if play were sufficiently imbalanced to make the league contests concentrated and intriguing enough. The NFL does well with that structure. I guess the knock on that idea is that some of the eight postseason teams might be weak, but hell, ten teams make the MLB postseason now, so that ship is well out of port.

Baseball has been stacking the attendance deck in favor of interleague since it started, grouping the games after school has gotten out, with games always on Father's Day and before the real blistering heat of August, etc.

And for most if not all of that time, 3 of the 5 series were weekend series. Then the comparison made in the media (no doubt quoting MLB press releases) would be to games up to that point in the season (i.e. April/May when it was cold, rainy and school wasn't out yet).

And for most if not all of that time, 3 of the 5 series were weekend series. Then the comparison made in the media (no doubt quoting MLB press releases) would be to games up to that point in the season (i.e. April/May when it was cold, rainy and school wasn't out yet).

4 of 6 series, at least for AL teams. I never bothered to look into what the NL teams had for interleague series; was it just a few teams that only had 5 series? Also, any two team city is going to have a natural boost to attendance for the rivalry games due to two fanbases being interested in going.

I was kinda surprised that they were willing to even out the leagues and go to the every day interleague format since they've put so much effort into rigging interleague attendance and constantly bringing it up as proof of success. Anyone really paying attention to this knew that this year's results were coming. I personally have no problem whatsoever with interleague, I just disliked MLB's over the top marketing of it and the way they constantly tried to pretend the concept was greatly increasing attendance.

4 of 6 series, at least for AL teams. I never bothered to look into what the NL teams had for interleague series; was it just a few teams that only had 5 series? Also, any two team city is going to have a natural boost to attendance for the rivalry games due to two fanbases being interested in going.

In the old system, four NL teams would play six series in a given yaer, the other 12 would play five (six interleague series x two NL teams playing intraleague while the interleague games were going on).

There were a few seasons when four of the six interleague series were played on weekends. Other years, it was an even 3-3 split.

Also I do think Selig has been working to diminish league distinctions and move toward his original "radical realignment" plan step by step.

More evidence of Selig's Infinite Evil: when you click on the Stats page at mlb.com, the default page mixes up the stats for the leagues. You have to go to the AL or NL tab to sort them into leagues, the way god intended.

When I started following baseball back in 2002, I thought it was kind of ridiculous that the leagues and divisions had different numbers of teams and thought spreading interleague play throughout the whole season was obviously the best choice. And what do you know. When they finally do it, interleague play blends seamlessly into the season. Just goes to show how dumb moving the Brewers over was in the first place.